That pretty much invalidates most of what you said. By "squandering" something, it means you saw no return. The game turned a profit, albeit not the size of which EA or investors would have preferred. However, they still turned a profit. That, in and of itself, means the money wasn't squandered.

How do you know that they have made a profit? And further more how do you know they made a bigger profit than a, for example, low risk stock investment would have made. The investment needs to have a big enough return to not be squandered from a time vs return perspective.

Originally Posted by notorious98

Once again, many of you people need to learn the difference between "Failed" and "Failed to meet Expectations". They are two different things. If the game failed, it would have already been shut down by now.

Or an alternative theory could be that they did not yet get the minimum needed return and as such are transitioning to free to play as a means to make back what they can before it's to late. Not saying this is the case but without actual numbers nor reasonings of EA's board you really can't claim it would be closed down by now if it failed.

Do I believe it was a failure? No. It (for the most part) set out to do what it intended to do. I honestly like the game, and I liked playing it for a good bit. In truth, what only frustrated me was how big they tried to go with it (massive planets with fifteen minutes of running between quests, nonskippable voice acting cutscenes, every fight being AoE AoE AoE). These things bothered me, and that's okay, it probably didn't bother other people. I still like the game and believe it has potential if they can be honest with themselves. It's still early enough for them to do that.

As long as there are still people playing it and are happy with it, it's not a failure. Maybe to investors it's more black and white, but we're gamers, everything is a shade of grey to us - or at least I hope it is.

I don't see them as light-hearted jokes, but I don't take them as an insult either of course!

I just feel their cheap jabs at a more superior, longer founded game. From what I have sen of Rift, it looks amazing, and if they appealed to the World of Warcraft player base more, rather then hit at it with these small jokes, they might get a more popular game. After all we're very similar groups of people, but it is just the medium of our entertainment that is different.

It's definitely Trion just trying to take the piss out of WoW fans. They're still doing it even though it's obvious Rift won't overtake WoW. I laughed at the "Save a Panda" Campaign they have going on when I got the email. If people are getting offended by these blatant jokes then clearly you should stay away from Rift since a light-hearted joke has struck some chord with you.

Now, not to get off-track, I don't think SWTOR is a failure in the big picture. It makes money - from what I understand - and people still play for the most part. The small picture, however, I think it failed or at least disappointed me. The A-P servers are dead and I have heard nothing about any consolidation with them. I pretty much only log on to do Ops (hate being a "raid-logger") and PVP which, while entertaining, is not what I want to do. It was like Bioware had no idea what the average MMO-player wanted in an MMO and just ignored it outright. I love BW and the games they make, but this one is just not doing it for me anymore .

They said if they could maintain 500k subs for 'X' amount of time, then it would be profitable. I'm not quite sure how many they have ATM though. Personally, I found it enjoyable for 1-50. Hands down one of the most fun leveling experiences I've had. Unfortunately they didn't do enough to set it apart from the pack, and the end game was thin. I really wish they had just made KoTOR3, using the ME3 engine.

For the money they spent on it, and the buggy hero engine they used way too soon, as well as going mostly F2P within a year, yeah it's a failure.

It is not going 'mostly free to play'.

Free to Play only covers the leveling process, which won't even be the full leveling experience when a new level cap is introduced. In order to fully enjoy the game at max level, you will need to either pay for PvP, operations or a subscription.

I think the missconception of players is that they see an MMORPG as an online game where you either raid or PvP, if either one of them doesn't outclass the game they have been playing the game, then th game is a failure no matter what because X does it better.

However, I play this game to role play, you know Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. If your a single player, you'll have a great time running through all the missions atleast once. On both sides. If your a multiplayer there is a wide variety of things to do such as heroic quests, group up with other players in the world to complete a quest! Or if thats not multiplayer enough for you, gather some people for the world boss on said planet! However for RP, this game is great, the gear that is available is just... awesome. Modable gear?! YES PLEASE.

Raids being to easy... well yes if you go in with weathered players everything is easy, its not like anyone has problems downing bosses on normal in WoW.

How do you know that they have made a profit? And further more how do you know they made a bigger profit than a, for example, low risk stock investment would have made. The investment needs to have a big enough return to not be squandered from a time vs return perspective.

I believe that we can safely assume the game has turned some sort of profit. Likely a small profit, but one nonetheless. As for me knowing whether or not it turned a bigger profit than a low risk stock investment, well, if you can point out the part where I said anything of the sort, I'd love to see it. As for a "time vs. return perspective", you really mean a "money vs. return perspective". "Time", in this case, is nothing more than "money". I believe that was already addressed.

---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 07:59 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Jtbrig7390

Rift's adds would disagree with you and it was blunt about it *We are not in Azeroth anymore*.

They're still poking WoW with a stick and, I'm sure, are aware they're never going to overtake them in subscribers.

I believe that we can safely assume the game has turned some sort of profit. Likely a small profit, but one nonetheless. As for me knowing whether or not it turned a bigger profit than a low risk stock investment, well, if you can point out the part where I said anything of the sort, I'd love to see it. As for a "time vs. return perspective", you really mean a "money vs. return perspective". "Time", in this case, is nothing more than "money". I believe that was already addressed.

If the money invested didn't give a better investment than that of a low to no risk investment would have over the same amount of time it would be squandered to some extent as they could have made more money on their investment by doing nothing. As far as if they made a profit or not I have really no idea, it all depends on how much they them self get from box sales and what the actual development cost was, it's far from a given fact that they have made any profit yet though.

That was CFO of EA, I wouldn't call him a middle management. Oddly enough, he lost his job shortly after first EA's quarterly report post SWTOR launch.

Are you talking about this part?

While Brown acknowledged it would require a careful balancing act to keep both existing MMO players and newcomers happy, he sees it as a target that has a very lucrative payoff.

"If we do that, our addressable market is well beyond 12 million people ... into more of a general gamer population, pretty much anyone that has a minimum spec personal computer," he said.

Because, honestly, he was saying they estimated 12 million MMO players in North America and Europe, so if they did it right, they would have had access to all of them and maybe more. Nowhere in that article you linked does anyone say they fully expect 10 million plus subscribers. If you read that into what was said, well, it must be very easy to get you to buy bridges. Having "access to" and "bringing every one in" are two entirely different things. Basic reading comprehension should have told you that.

Stores dont buy games for 60 bucks then sell them for the same price. That would mean they dont make an ounce of profit.
At best stores buy games for half the price they sell it for, and the more units the buy the better deal they get.

Not in the video game market. Stores generally make $5-$10 on each game sold, normally closer to the $5 mark (under 10%) when a game is brand new. Not $30. And for consoles, they literally make almost $0. The MSRP for the consoles goes almost entirely to the console maker.

It is a good game but is lacks some features that Bioware really had no excuse not to include in the game. Mainly this was at the end game point. Lack of nameplates made raiding horrible for melee dps, let alone a tank(I did both)

Not to mention the way the frames worked left a lot of healers used to the flexibility they had in WoW questioning why they even bothered. Plus the obvious lack of mod support, which realistically cannot be covered by in house customisation options.

I felt the levelling process was pretty solid and the storylines would be hard to beat. Despite what some people claim you even got dialogue based on both your class and race.

Since it became largely free to play I have actually felt tempted to go back and complete one or two republic character storylines as I only truly played Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent. The Jedi Shadow story was pretty compelling as was my Trooper's

To be honest Bioware's main failing seems to be in delivering anything but story. I could go on to detail it but it would most likely go against the derailing thread rules.

Originally Posted by Profyrion

There are no realistic definitions of failure one could apply to TOR. It may have failed to meet certain expectations, but that isn't realistic because the expectations weren't realistic.

It is actually a very good game with a very bad reputation among gamers. Kinda sad.

The thing is if you look at WoW when it launched what it effectively did was refine all the elements of existing MMOs(mainly everquest) and then added on the Warcraft story. This is always funny when you see games being called WoW clones.

Bioware did what many other companies do when releasing an MMO and either ignored WoW successes or tried so hard to not be associated with WoW that they made decisions detrimental to the game.

There is absolutely no point in trying to pretend that a competitor did something badly for the sake of changing it, or to pretend that the better solution is to not add their features at all.

It really does annoy me when MMOs fail on the grounds of being too stubborn or lazy to use past games of the genre as building blocks. They have no excuse to wonder why their game failed if they don't.

I thought the game was really well made, it was more issues with the engine itself. Long load times, 3 longass load screens to get to an instance, if you died i an instance, it would spawn you outside and make you reload.

There are a few ways to look at it. For the money I have spent on it I enjoyed the game and got more then my money's worth from it. So it was a success that way. The masses don't seem to agree with this based on the way the game hemoraged players and had to completely change directions and in what seemed like a panic based move or forced by the financial baking greatly changed the game most notably with it going f2p. It is safe to say that wasn't the plan this time last year so something failed along the line.

---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 06:11 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Riavan

I thought the game was really well made, it was more issues with the engine itself. Long load times, 3 longass load screens to get to an instance, if you died i an instance, it would spawn you outside and make you reload.

The insane amount of load screen got old quickly for sure. The worst being the hallway from your ship to a space port. They did in some ways remove some of this allowing you to go directly back to your ship eventually.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. -Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"

Originally Posted by fengosa

Stereotypes: it's easier than thinking.

Originally Posted by 182987965621

I said this in another thread but Holinka is like a manager of Starbucks who had no idea that the store had been out of coffee for 3 months.

I thought the game was really well made, it was more issues with the engine itself. Long load times, 3 longass load screens to get to an instance, if you died i an instance, it would spawn you outside and make you reload.

This wasn't something I really had an issue with, but it was like my friend used to say to me: "there is no way I could play this game without an SSD" even then they were more like standard loading screens. Whereas in WoW or a number of other MMOs you can't even read the tips on the loading screen if it is running on an SSD.

just my 2 cents worth. yes swtor was a complete colossal failure. now thats not to say its a bad game its far from it, however the sheer amount of money they spent on development, they spent what an estimated $200 million creating swtor and yet less than a year on they have less than a million subs and have been forced to give a free to play option.